


Snowdrops and Strawberry Flowers

by AriadneKurosaki



Category: Bleach
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:41:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27262906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriadneKurosaki/pseuds/AriadneKurosaki
Summary: The next morning is the first day he coughs up petals, narrow and snowy white as they land in his palm. He must have inhaled them at some point, he thinks, although they don’t look mangled enough for that. Maybe now that they’re gone, he won’t cough anymore.He’s utterly, completely wrong.
Relationships: Kuchiki Rukia/Kurosaki Ichigo
Comments: 11
Kudos: 66
Collections: Ichiruki week





	Snowdrops and Strawberry Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Day 6, emotional motion sickness/I can't seem to drown you out

Rukia’s cough starts nine weeks after Ichigo loses the last of his powers and watches her vanish from his sight. Shinigami aren’t really supposed to get _sick_ , she thinks – her Captain being a glaring exception to the rule. It starts as a tickle in her throat, a tingling that won’t quite go away. She adds honey and lemon to her tea to soothe the irritation and drinks it by the potful as she studies for the lieutenants’ examination.

She dreams, sometimes, of Ichigo. Of amber-brown eyes and strong hands, of bright orange hair that always falls into his face. Rukia dreams of the moment she could no longer see herself in his eyes and the moment he turned away, walking back into his house.

The tickle in her throat becomes a cough that just won’t stop. Soon, Rukia gains a reputation within the division for her newfound addiction to tea. There is always a fresh pot on her desk as she studies, and her teacup is always full. The tea soothes her throat only momentarily, and Rukia takes to carrying a small, white handkerchief to cough into and stifle the noise.

The first time Captain Ukitake catches her, she is at a desk in the Thirteenth Division, with papers piled high around her and a tea tray at her elbow. “Rukia, are you well?” His voice startles Rukia and she raises her head from coughing into her ever-present handkerchief. The man’s expression is one of gentle worry, and he glances meaningfully at the many empty cups on her desk. “You’ve been coughing more and more often.”

She flushes brightly. “Ah, my apologies, Captain. The dust from my study guides is troubling me.” Rukia gestures at the papers piled on her desk. Some of the guides are _quite_ old, and they really are awfully dusty.

Ukitake frowns gently and pats her lightly on the shoulder. “Well, be sure to get some fresh air. I know you have _plenty_ of tea.” He gives a cough of his own and then sweeps away, haori billowing behind him.

Rukia opens the hand clutching her handkerchief. Nestled inside the fabric is a single white petal. It must be from the tea, she thinks, but the brew is merely a middling hojicha, and when she opens the pot the mesh basket shows no evidence of flower petals. Still, she puts it out of her mind and focuses on her studies.

The coughing gets worse, and there is almost always a flower petal or two, or three, or four coming from her mouth. Rukia barely contains it, even as she is officially named Lieutenant of the Thirteenth Division and Ukitake proudly ties the badge around her bicep for the first time. She thinks: _Ichigo would have been proud of me_. And then she thinks _Ichigo deserves a normal life, and all I have ever done is ruined that for him._ When she leaves the assembly hall in which her investiture ceremony was held, Rukia coughs up a handful of flower petals, white and crumpled in her hands.

Still, there is so much work to be done. The division hasn’t had a lieutenant in five decades, after all. Rukia claims the lieutenant’s desk for her own and soon it is covered in paperwork and chappy merchandise – and cups of tea. Some of the chappies are the ones that Ichigo purchased for her. Those she treasures most of all, though she remembers his resentment when he had to fork over his human world yen for them.

“C-captain! Lieutenant!” Rukia tries to stifle her coughing as Sentarou and Kiyone run into the office she shares with Ukitake. She _and_ her captain are both mid-coughing fit; it sounds a little ridiculous, she thinks even as she coughs up a few more white petals. They are flecked with blood, a new and concerning development.

“I’ll get tea for the Captain!” Sentarou announces.

“No, _I’ll_ get tea for the Captain. _And_ for Rukia!” Kiyone protests.

Rukia exchanges a look with Ukitake, whose face has drained of all color as he looks at her.

“Tea would be very helpful, thank you both,” Ukitake rasps and coughs into his handkerchief again. When the third seats have departed, he turns his attention to Rukia. “Those are flower petals,” he says, and although there is no accusation in his voice Rukia flinches.

“They must have been in my tea,” Rukia fibs.

Ukitake’s eyes narrow at her and he glances at the crumpled handkerchief in her hand. “You know that you can tell me anything and I will listen, Rukia,” he says gently.

Rukia’s lips part, on the verge of confessing her worry, but Kiyone and Sentarou rush in with tea trays in hand.

“I’ll serve Captain Ukitake!”

“No _I’ll_ do it!”

And Rukia closes her mouth and smiles at Kiyone as she pours the tea. Ukitake merely looks on, eyes ineffably old and sad. When she asks for time off to allow Orihime to visit, he grants it readily but there is something else in his eyes that Rukia tries not to see.

“The flowers are so beautiful!” Orihime says a few days later as they walk through the Thirteenth Division training grounds.

Rukia tries her best to keep her coughing under control and keeps as cheerful a smile as she can manage on her face while they view the flowers and chat with Shinji. It works until Orihime turns to Rukia and says, “Kuchiki-san, I’m so worried about Kurosaki-kun. He’s so withdrawn and sad all the time! And Yuzu-chan says he isn’t eating the way he should be!”

Before Rukia can say anything she explodes into a coughing fit, barely managing to cover it with a handkerchief in time. Strangely, Orihime bursts into tears at the same time, streaks of saltwater running down her face and great sobs heaving from her chest. It’s so puzzling that when Rukia gets her coughing under control she asks gently, “Isn’t he happy, living a normal life?”

But Orihime shakes her head even as she keeps crying, and flings herself on Rukia. “I wanted him to be! I was so happy that he wouldn’t be in danger anymore and we could be normal together,” she cries. The words make Rukia blink even as she pats the girl gently on her back.

 _Normal together? But she still has her flowers_ , she thinks. “I’m sure it’s been an adjustment,” Rukia prevaricates.

“He’s – not the same at all,” Orihime sobs. “And I just don’t know what to do!”

Neither does Rukia, so she does her best to comfort her friend. But the knowledge that Ichigo is clearly not doing well stays with her long after Orihime leaves. She doesn’t notice the way Orihime notices her coughing, or realize that she has caught a glimpse of the white petals coated in blood.

* * *

Ichigo’s cough starts a week after Rukia disappears in front of him, along with the last of his shinigami powers. He blames it on a winter cold. Yuzu brings tea to his room when she hears him coughing, and Ichigo drinks it to ease the scratchy feeling in his throat. When the cough lingers into the spring and summer, he calls it allergies and then a _summer_ cold. Never mind that he never has so much as a sniffle to accompany the coughing.

Cough syrup doesn’t seem to touch it, and his teachers eventually give him blanket permission to use cough drops in class. As a result, there’s always a lingering scent of menthol and honey around Ichigo. He watches Uryuu, Chad, and Orihime run off to deal with hollows the way _he_ used to, and tries to ignore the ache in his chest that brings up. 

Goat-Chin examines him early on and finds nothing wrong with his son except a case of “teenage angst”, as he calls it, ignoring the fact that Ichigo used to be an extraordinarily powerful shinigami and is now just an ordinary teenager. He threatens to send Ichigo off for allergy testing, but Ichigo just shrugs and tells him to do what he wants. When he leaves his father’s clinic, he doesn’t notice how serious his old man looks, face shadowed and somber under the glare of the lights.

“Ah, Kurosaki-kun, isn’t it a lovely day out? Would you like to take a walk with me?” Orihime asks, voice high and hopeful during their lunch time.

Ichigo just looks out the window. “No thanks,” he says. “I think it’ll make my allergies worse.” Because that’s all the cough is – an allergic reaction to something.

At night he dreams of Rukia, of her voice calling his name and her body dancing close to his in battle, Sode no Shirayuki gleaming white and sending blasts of ice at her enemies. He dreams of that moment in Hueco Mundo when he caught her in mid-fall, facing off against Yammy to protect her.

 _Ichigo. Ichigo, we live in two different worlds. This can’t happen_ , she tells him one night in a dream. The next morning is the first day he coughs up petals, narrow and snowy white as they land in his palm. He must have inhaled them at some point, he thinks, although they don’t look mangled enough for that. Maybe now that they’re gone, he won’t cough anymore.

He’s utterly, completely wrong.

Time passes, somehow both fast and slow. Ichigo’s birthday passes by nearly unremarked by his own choice: he picks at his birthday dinner, eating only enough in between coughing fits to spare Yuzu’s feelings. He ignores the gifts his family gives him.

Soon it has been a year. Ichigo’s coughing just gets worse and worse, and one morning in class he coughs so hard that he brings up something new: an entire, bloodied snowdrop. He doesn’t hide it quickly enough; his teacher and classmates are staring at him. Orihime’s _crying_ , big, fat tears dripping down her cheeks. Uryuu just stares behind his glasses.

“Would you like to go to the nurse?” the teacher asks. Ichigo just shakes his head and coughs again.

“Sorry, sensei,” he apologizes in a low tone. He doesn’t even look up when Orihime and Uryuu run from the classroom a few minutes later. He’s seen Orihime with her phone, one that looks like Rukia’s denreishinki and – this time, when he coughs, he brings up only bright red blood.

That night when he dreams of her she is coughing too, blood spattering red down the front of a white yukata just like the one she wore before her near-execution. It doesn’t make any sense, but there’s a strawberry flower in Rukia’s hands.

When Ichigo coughs up another three perfect, bloodied snowdrops, one of them in front of his father, Isshin forces him into the clinic’s x-ray machine.

He’s sheet-white when he looks at the resulting film. “Hanahaki,” Isshin says roughly. “You have – you have _snowdrops_ growing in your lungs, son.”

Ichigo scrubs at the back of his neck with one hand, and tries to hold in a cough. “Isn’t that a thing that boys in bad manga get?” He tries for a sneer, but just coughs blood and petals into a white tissue.

Isshin’s expression is grave as he sits across from his son. “I saw a case of it…once. You’re in love with Rukia, aren’t you?” he asks.

He wants to deny it. Wants to say, _With that midget? Are you joking?_ But instead all that comes out is a low, “Yeah.”

“There’s nothing I can give you for it,” his father says. He looks _old_ , suddenly. Much more than he ever has before.

“So, what then?” Ichigo asks.

But Isshin says, “There isn’t anything I can do.”

* * *

“Rukia! Lieutenant, we need to get you to the Fourth,” Kiyone exclaims over Rukia’s coughing fit. Though she tries to shake her head, she can’t get enough air into her lungs to do anything but hack up petals and entire flowers. She swears there’s even a strawberry amidst the mess, but everything is covered in her blood.

“I’m –”

“You’re not _fine_ , Lieutenant,” Sentarou cuts in. He summons a hell butterfly with a thought and sends it winging toward the Fourth Division. “I’ve let them know we’re coming. Climb on,” he says, surprisingly gentle.

But Rukia reels back from him, thinking of being carried on Ichigo’s back so many months ago, of feeling him strong beneath her as he ran along rooftops to find and destroy a hollow. It sparks another coughing fit of white petals and red blood, and before she can protest Sentarou and Kiyone – so often fighting – pick her up between them and take off at a run, one holding her under her arms and the other beneath her legs. It’s not the same – thankfully – as being carried by Ichigo. But it’s damned uncomfortable, and she’s grateful that the pathetic display only lasts a few minutes, until they’ve bundled her into the Fourth and practically shoved her at Isane.

And when Isane watches her struggle to her feet as she coughs up strawberry flowers there is so much _pity_ in her eyes that Rukia doesn’t protest when she is led to a private room. “How long have you been coughing up flowers, Lieutenant Kuchiki?” Isane asks when the door is closed and they are alone.

Rukia’s cheeks flush and pale by turns. “Months,” she finally admits as she allows Isane to listen to her heart and lungs, to peer into her mouth.

“Strawberry flowers,” the other woman observes calmly. “I’m going to conduct some additional tests, Kuchiki-san. They won’t hurt.”

The tests themselves don’t hurt, but Rukia has coughed herself raw by the time they are done and Isane’s limpid eyes are looking at her again. She brings tea and Rukia gulps it down eagerly to soothe her throat, heedless of any kind of propriety. “Well?” she asks finally.

“You already know what you have, Kuchiki-san,” Isane says gently. “Hanahaki Disease. And it’s quite advanced – the flowers are embedded extensively in your lungs. You are lucky that strawberry plants are small and don’t have hard branches.”

She did already know – but the words still steal the breath from Rukia’s lungs. Hanahaki. The disease of unrequited love. Ichigo _doesn’t love her_. But she has already made promises; has already spoken to Urahara. Even if all that sits between them is friendship, she won’t go back on her promise to restore Ichigo’s powers by any means necessary. “Is there anything that can be done?” Rukia asks quietly.

“I’m sorry, Kuchiki-san. There is only one cure for Hanahaki: being loved in return.”

* * *

Seventeen months after Ichigo loses his powers, he meets the Fullbringers and thinks: _maybe they have the answers_. Soon he has power again. It’s a strange power, brought forth when he holds the useless substitute badge and thinks of _Rukia_. Or maybe it isn’t that strange; after all, the angry redhead named Riruka has told him that fullbring is a power of _love_.

And then it all falls apart again. Tsukishima has somehow wormed his way into everyone’s lives as Ichigo’s “cousin”. Uryuu gets hurt. And on a rainy night, Ginjo steals Ichigo’s fullbring powers and leaves him kneeling on the ground, powerless as he coughs up entire _stalks_ of snowdrops, screaming through a throat ripped raw, “Give me back my powers, Ginjo!”

He should have expected this last betrayal: a sword stabbing him in the back through his chest, a point of blinding pain amid the pain of lungs tired from growing flowers, amid the pain of a heart that beats for a dead woman.

When he turns his head, body held captive by the glowing blue blade, Kisuke and his father are there. “You too?” he asks, through a sob.

But: “You should be able to see her now,” Isshin says.

And then she’s there, reappearing in his eyes: standing behind him, hands on the hilt of a sword of pure blue light. In the darkness Rukia is pale, hair short and eyes big in a slender face. “Rukia,” he whispers.

Then power explodes outwards from the sword in his chest, swirling around him like a tornado, and when Ichigo can see again he is wearing a shihakusho once more. There is something new: black markings cover the backs of his hands and Zangetsu is shorter and wider than it was. Tsukishima and Ginjo are staring at him, but Ichigo has eyes only for Rukia – Rukia, who drops the glowing blue sword, bends over double, and coughs violently until bloodied flowers land in her hands.

He sticks Zangetsu in the ground and he’s in front of her without thinking about it. The fullbringers still need to be dealt with, but. But he’s staring at her and at the _strawberry flowers_ in her palms. “You have Hanahaki,” Ichigo says hoarsely. The rain is dying down, but droplets of water wash Rukia’s blood from the flowers.

“It’s nothing. What about _you_? I turn my back and you’ve gotten pathetic,” Rukia protests, and lifts her hand to hit him over the head.

Ichigo’s hand on her wrist stops her. “It’s not nothing,” he says, and his other hand opens, revealing the bloodied snowdrop.

“Oh,” she whispers.

“Oh,” Ichigo agrees. For the shape of the flower is mimicked on Rukia’s lieutenant’s badge – a promotion he didn’t know about.

“Ichigo.” Her voice is soft, though hoarse from coughing. Their eyes meet, wide and dark as the rain stops.

“Rukia.” His hand is still on her wrist, but it slides to twine their fingers together. The silk of her tekko is soft against his skin, a contrast to the calluses on her fingers.

“Yes.” They don’t kiss – they don’t even speak the words. But Ichigo can breathe easier all of a sudden, and he senses the moment that she can too. And he thinks that he won’t cough up snowdrops anymore. And that she won’t choke on strawberry flowers.

Later, when Ginjo and Tsukishima are dead and Ichigo and Rukia are both in Soul Society again, Isane examines them. “You will both make a full recovery,” she pronounces when she has performed diagnostic kido and listened to their lungs. “There is no trace of Hanahaki Disease in either of you, and the kido I have performed will heal the damage to your lungs.” Then she looks at them both, and says quietly, “I’m so glad.” With a smile on her face she dismisses them, and Ichigo’s fingers twine with Rukia’s again as they leave the relief station.

“Rukia,” he says quietly, and she turns to him. Their eyes meet before their lips do, and they share a soft kiss beneath the sunlight. There will be complications: she has a job to do here in the Seireitei and he is still seventeen and in his final year of high school. But for just a moment they breathe each other’s air, free of snowdrops and strawberry flowers for the first time in seventeen months.


End file.
